Thomas Merton said he always wanted to write a book about everything. Not a book that would cover everything -but a book in which everything could go. This is a blog where everything can go, things of family, of life, and especially of God.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

From the Detailed Rules for Monks

From today's Office of Reading

From the Detailed Rules for Monks by St. Basil the Great, bishop

The ability to love is within each of us

Love of God is not something that can be taught. We did not learn from someone else how to rejoice in light or want to live, or to love our parents or guardians. It is the same – perhaps even more so – with our love for God: it does not come by another’s teaching. As soon as the living creature (that is, man) comes to be, a power of reason is implanted in us like a seed, containing within it the ability and the need to love. When the school of God’s law admits this power of reason, it cultivates it diligently, skilfully nurtures it, and with God’s help brings it to perfection. For this reason, as by God’s gift, I find you with the zeal necessary to attain this end, and you on your part help me with your prayers. I will try to fan into flame the spark of divine love that is hidden within you, as far as I am able through the power of the Holy Spirit. First, let me say that we have already received from God the ability to fulfil all his commands. We have then no reason to resent them, as if something beyond our capacity were being asked of us. We have no reason either to be angry, as if we had to pay back more than we had received. When we use this ability in a right and fitting way, we lead a life of virtue and holiness. But if we misuse it, we fall into sin. This is the definition of sin: the misuse of powers given us by God for doing good, a use contrary to God’s commands. On the other hand, the virtue that God asks of us is the use of the same powers based on a good conscience in accordance with God’s command. Since this is so, we can say the same about love. Since we received a command to love God, we possess from the first moment of our existence an innate power and ability to love. The proof of this is not to be sought outside ourselves, but each one can learn this from himself and in himself. It is natural for us to want things that are good and pleasing to the eye, even though at first different things seem beautiful and good to different people. In the same way, we love what is related to us or near to us, though we have not been taught to do so, and we spontaneously feel well disposed to our benefactors. What, I ask, is more wonderful than the beauty of God? What thought is more pleasing and wonderful than God’s majesty? What desire is as urgent and overpowering as the desire implanted by God in a soul that is completely purified of sin and cries out in its love: I am wounded by love? The radiance of divine beauty is altogether beyond the power of words to describe.

The blogger and his mom

"Ordination Day" 2011

Deacons

Praying my way over the George Washington Bridge

ASSISI

Drawing by Fr. Albert Holtz, O.S.B., a monk of Newark Abbey

Cushing, Maine

Christina's World

MC FINAL VOWS IN DC

With Theodore Cardinal McCarrick

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"The call goes forth, and is at once followed by the response of obedience. …. It displays not the slightest interest in the psychological reason for a man’s religious decisions. And why? For the simple reason that the cause behind the immediate following of call by response is Jesus Christ Himself."

Venerable Father Solanus Casey

"God who loves tiny beginnings, will know as He always knows best, how and when to provide developments".

Saint Gianna Beretta Molla

Gianna Beretta Molla was a simple, but more than ever, significant messenger of divine love. In a letter to her future husband a few days before their marriage, she wrote: "Love is the most beautiful sentiment the Lord has put into the soul of men and women". - JPII

Aillte an Mhothair

Mary and Me

LIVE ACTION

A NEW MEDIA MOVEMENT FOR LIFE

Newark Abbey NJ

Brother Simon Peter, O.S.B.

MC Sisters in Washington, DC.

Mass Readings

ROBERT E. "Midge" KENNEDY - HERO

KIA in Germany on February 23, 1945, near Linnich, during the Ruhr River Crossing. Received the Purple Heart. Buried in the Netherlands. A 38th Street boy from Union City, NJ. My dad’s dearest friend.

Robert Lax, the poet who fell off the map.

And in the beginning was love. Love made a sphere: all things grew within it; the sphere then encompassed beginnings and endings, beginning and end. Love had a compass whose whirling dance traced out a sphere of love in the void: in the center thereof rose a fountain.